


In the Madness and Soil

by EllaStorm



Category: The Borgias (Showtime TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Brother/Sister Incest, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Drugs, F/M, I feel that explains a lot about this story, I wrote this to the soft sounds of Lana del Rey, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Rock'N'Roll, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 16:16:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14793788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaStorm/pseuds/EllaStorm
Summary: The 1970s. In a decade filled with war, opulence and drugs, Lucrezia Borgia grows up as the only daughter to L.A.’s most influential crime family. Squeezed into the corset of her father’s ambitions she’s forced into a brutal marriage, stripped of her girlhood, and turned on a path of cunning and manipulation in order to survive. Meanwhile her older brother, Cesare, who has a proclivity for breaking their father’s rules and wields a gun like he was born for it, keeps coming back to her – and Lucrezia slowly realizes that she has always loved him a little more than she should.





	1. Innocence Lost (June 1972)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SandraMorningstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandraMorningstar/gifts).



> Ever since I’ve started thinking about a Modern Borgias AU (which was, basically, from Day One of Watching This Bloody Show That Is Eating Up My Life), the idea of the Borgias as L.A. Drug Lords in the 70s never really left my head. So… I wrote it. The focus is less on politics and more on Lucrezia’s story arc, that I completely stole borrowed from the series; and in typical me-fashion I couldn’t resist spiking this with a good amount of rock’n’roll music, models of classic cars, dark leather pants, nods to date-rape-drugs and a tiny bit of literary symbolism (yes, there’s a Thomas-Mann-novel referenced in this, but honestly – the man has written wayyyy too much about sibling incest for him not to sooner or later appear here). Apropos of: Sibling incest is an overarching theme in this fic. If you watched and enjoyed the show, I’m sure you’ll be okay with it ;)
> 
> Title from the Hozier song “Take Me To Church” (This was one-hundred percent written for Cesare/Lucrezia and nobody will convince me otherwise.)
> 
> @Sandra: This is for you. Our talks about this show have been inspirational to me; and I can't wait to read your very own spin on the Modern!AU.

Lucrezia has always had a strange penchant for daydreaming.

Even though she’s still not sure if _daydreaming_ is the right word for it. _Visions_ might be more accurate _,_ but that sounds rather occult, a term that might appear in one of the songs Cesare loves to listen to. Still, it’s quite suited to describe the short bursts of images in her mind that she can’t seem to remember the content of only seconds after having experienced them. She finds that these visions – for lack of a better word – are most likely to occur in the mornings, when she is still half asleep, and her mind has not quite taken in the reality around her; or in the evenings, when she is close to drifting over the edge into dreaming. Sometimes they happen when she’s looking at Cesare, too, when his face takes on a certain expression, when the light hits him at a particular angle, reflects in his eyes and on his hair and bathes his dark complexion in brilliance. It’s hard to explain, but it seems that for the splinter of a second, she sees him somewhere else then, in different clothes, smiling at her across a wide-open space. What she feels at the sight is what one might feel looking at a forgotten painting from one’s childhood that one has no memory of drawing or stashing away, but still experiences a strange kind of nostalgia for. Concurrently, a deep, old sadness takes root in Lucrezia, when these moments happen. It puzzles her. She is merely seventeen years old, after all. Her father is richer than God. The only plight in her life is her brother Juan’s big mouth, an occasional broken fingernail and the fact that, sometime in the future, she will marry one of father’s successful business partners and move to a lovely oceanside villa in Malibu Beach. She will be a rich, bored housewife with rich, bored children and no care in the whole wide world, except which clothes she is supposed to wear to the next cocktail party.

What would she know about sadness?

“Nothing,” she murmurs.

“What were you saying, sis?” Cesare is looking at her with curiosity in his eyes.

They’re lying on the grass by the pool in the gardens of the Cattanio estate just north of Los Angeles, in the shadow of a palm-tree, where the sun doesn’t burn Lucrezia’s delicate skin. Their mother, Vanozza Cattanio, has made quite a fortune for herself in the past decade with investments in new clubs and restaurants along the Sunset Strip, after she quit her job as a high-class escort once and for all; and she’s impressively good at managing her finances – maybe even better than their father. One thing she lacks, though, is his ambition, and Lucrezia is incredibly grateful for it: Her mother has never been striving for more than she has now, and Lucrezia enjoys the warmth and tranquillity that always welcomes her here, in Vanozza’s little realm. It hurt her mother, deeply, Lucrezia remembers, when father left her for Giulia, a Dutch-Italian actress, and beautiful in a Parisian sort of way, completely unlike Vanozza’s fiery Mexican charms. Still, Rodrigo and she are amicable now, after a few months of unfettered heartbreak and a few shattered vases, not least because Vanozza is the mother of his children, and her financial independence allows her to stand up to him and make demands, which Lucrezia reckons he is quietly impressed by.

“You said something,” Cesare reminds her, and Lucrezia smiles at him. He’s close to her – as close as always: she can’t remember him ever being very far away – and she smells the sunscreen on his skin and the traces of the expensive, earthy aftershave he uses. His hair has grown out over the summer, it curls down almost to his shoulders now, and she has the suspicion that he’s – at least partially – keeping it that way to annoy their father. She likes it, though. A lot. It feels like silk under her fingertips, and when they dive together in the swimming pool, hold their breath as long as they can, hand in hand, it floats around his head like a soft, dark cloud.

“I was thinking about sadness,” Lucrezia finally says. Cesare is the only one she has told of her visions, because being honest with him has always felt like the natural thing to do. “When I get these pictures, you know, the ones I can’t remember afterwards, I just…I feel incredibly sad. And I realised just now, I don’t really know sadness. Holocaust survivors know sadness. The people in Vietnam know sadness. Our mother knows sadness. But me? How would I know sadness? And still…”

Cesare takes her hand and kisses the back of it, like he does often. “Maybe it’s not _your_ sadness, sis.”

“What do you mean?”

Her brother sighs. “Maybe it’s just the weight of the world. Cosmic sadness.”

Lucrezia can’t help but giggle a little at that.

“Cosmic sadness? Dear brother, what music have you been listening to?”

The corners of Cesare’s mouth jerk upwards. “Maybe a little too much Jim Morrison.”

“Evidently.” Lucrezia grinned.

Her brother’s face sets into a more serious expression only a moment later and his fingers find her cheek, softly. “You’ll come to me, when you’re sad, won’t you?”

Lucrezia searches Cesare’s eyes and finds the familiar warmth inside them, strong and steadfast. “I promise.”

 

 

***

 

She breaks her promise when she marries Giovanni Sforza.

He’s an old acquaintance of father, a WWII veteran, and he has been doing business with the Borgia family for well over twenty years now. Lucrezia learns that the Borgia-Sforza-collaboration has been through a few rough patches, because the Sforza family threatens to lay claim to certain areas that are under Borgia protection and blood has been shed in the past; but this marriage is supposed to solve the discord between them once and for all: The Sforza and the Borgia are supposed to work together in perfect harmony from now on; and the Sforza will create another stronghold in L.A. that will protect the Borgia family against their enemies in the city – the Orsini, the Baglioni and the Colonna – as well as against the invasion of new cartels from Chicago that have been trying to set foot in California ever since the party drug scene really started taking off with the Hippie movement. That is what Cesare discloses to Lucrezia before she is married, since her father deems her too young to tell her anything about such important things.

She knows Rodrigo has always been trying to keep her out of business in order to keep her out of harm’s way, but she also knows that she is a Borgia, and violence will inevitably come find her, no matter how much she does or doesn’t know about father’s criminal machinations. And since Lucrezia likes knowing things a lot more than not knowing things, she uses every opportunity to pester her brother about the constellations of power in their family. What she knows by now is that her father Rodrigo has been elected head of the most traditionally powerful cartel in the whole Southwest after his predecessor died of old age about four years ago, and now goes by the title of _Holy Father,_ surrounded in a coterie of members of other powerful families whose criminal territory stretches from Nevada and Colorado all the way to Texas, and whom Cesare calls _Cardinals._ He himself is one of them, even though he despises it – the state of _Cardinal_ might give him the power of handling finances and plotting behind the scenes as their father’s consultant, but their brother Juan, who is no _Cardinal_ , is head of father’s little army and as such allowed to handle the Borgia warfare – a position Cesare has longed for since he could pronounce the word _army_ , and one that is now far beyond his reach.

Juan, of course, never gets tired of reminding his brother of the fact, and Lucrezia can’t count the times she’s heard him say: _I’m the one with the gun. You stick to your ballpoint pens._

The morning after her wedding night Lucrezia, for the very first time in her short life, understands Cesare’s desire to wield a firearm. A gun might have protected her against the brutality she encountered in her marital bed; but, like Cesare, she doesn’t have one, and her tears wet the light blue pillowcase, while her husband lies snoring behind her. It doesn’t stop after that. Every night brings new suffering for her; and even though Lucrezia has a beautiful oceanside villa at her disposal and diamonds in spades, none of that brings her any joy. The thought of children fathered by her husband, before the marriage a happy thought, now actively nauseates her.

When she’s on the phone with Cesare, when they visit each other, she knows he can tell something is wrong. She evades his questioning glances, his worried inquiries, speaks much and says nothing, even though she promised, a lifetime ago in her mother’s garden, to do the opposite. But they were both children then, naïve in their idea that they could hold on to their innocence in this family they’ve been born into. And it’s not like Cesare can really _do_ anything about Lucrezia’s situation, either, so she keeps her suffering close to her chest. Sometimes she remembers her words from back then, so far away now, when she could still claim that she knew nothing about sadness.

She finds solace in the most unexpected of places, in the smile of a gardener, Paolo, that works in the Sforza estate. For the first time in her life she experiences the warm, soft touch of a lover, finds herself dancing in the rain, kissing a boy her age with teenage ardour and making love to him at the poolside when her husband is at work. Paolo allows her to forget about her pain and be free for a short while, even helps her to stage a small car accident that leaves Giovanni with a broken leg for a few months. The handicap keeps him temporarily confined to the paisley-patterned couch in the living room and considerably mellows his temper.

Unfortunately, he does, eventually, recover; and Lucrezia’s days grow greyer, her happiness fades like flowers in winter the more steps her husband makes without crutches.

Then, one evening, Giovanni casually tells her over dinner that he has embezzled Borgia money to support the cause of the Chicago cartel that plans to deposit Rodrigo Borgia as current Holy Father of L.A., an information that effectively renders Lucrezia’s marriage obsolete, all her suffering completely useless; and bile rises in her throat. Giovanni must think her obtuse to believe he has her over a barrel, must think her scared out of her mind to believe she has given up her loyalty to her father the moment she set foot in his house.

He is mistaken. She’s a lot less obtuse, a lot less scared than she was when she arrived here – and in a way he has himself to thank for that.

Lucrezia looks for a good, unobserved moment to get to a phone and tell her father of this outrageous betrayal, but the task is taken from her hands early the next morning, when Giulia Farnese’s red Lamborghini Miura rolls up in the driveway like a mirage. Giulia climbs out, a vision in turquoise, like Luciana Paluzzi in that one James-Bond-movie Cesare never tires of watching, and explains to Lucrezia’s husband, with the clear, charismatic charm Lucrezia has admired her for ever since she’s come to know her, that the presence of his wife is requested back at her father’s house in L.A. for the weekend.

Giovanni has a few objections, but Giulia convinces him to change his mind on all of them; and Lucrezia surmises that her father, cunning as he is, already suspects her husband’s faithlessness. Though Lucrezia only packs her most personal belongings in a small overnight bag, climbing into the passenger seat of Giulia’s car she instinctually knows that she’s never coming back here.

Giulia elegantly fixes her sunglasses, then pushes the gas pedal to the floor only moments after they’ve made it out of the driveway, like she, too, can’t wait to get out of here. Lucrezia watches the Sforza estate slowly disappear in the rear-view-mirror, swallowed up by the flimmering midday heat between the sun-parched hillsides of Santa Cruz – and with it her innocence, left behind on the cool tile floor of an empty bedroom.


	2. The Mark of Cain (March 1974)

When she returns to L.A. she isn’t the same any more. She has hardened from the inside, constructed a stainless steel casing around herself, a metal core where her innocence used to reside. To her relief, she isn’t the only one who is changed: Cesare, too, has lost the last remnants of his boyishness over heartbreak and city warfare; and Lucrezia spies him wielding a gun and a knife in the seclusion of an abandoned garden shed, watches the new man in his company – a red-haired shadow by the name of Micheletto – teach him, and she knows her brother is becoming more dangerous to the world every day. Something about this observation fills her with pride and an odd sense of completion – like this is the path Cesare was supposed to take right from the beginning. Like the ballpoint pen was never supposed to be his weapon of choice.

Rodrigo meanwhile orchestrates Lucrezia’s divorce with the same knife-sharp determination he orchestrated her betrothal with, and humiliates the Sforza family financially and personally in front of an entire court. Lucrezia, who is pregnant with Paolo’s child – not Giovanni’s, to her utter relief –, smiles and watches her husband be torn apart by father’s lawyers like a codfish in a shark tank.

 

***

 

The satisfaction doesn’t last.

Lucrezia’s son becomes the pivot of her life, one innocent soul in a nest of vipers; and when Paolo returns to her for one night, then dies in a “freak road accident”, her baby son is the one that brings Lucrezia back after she thought herself dead and gone. His eyes, his soft grabby hands, his tears manage what neither her father nor Cesare can: They infuse life back into her veins, piece by piece, until she feels she can survive. Paolo’s loss leaves her with another deep scar, a scar she sews up with barbed wire, when she learns that none other than her brother Juan is responsible for Paolo’s death, unwilling to accept _a common gardener_ as his sister’s lover; and it is then that she starts to borrow books from the family library that teach her about pharmacological interactions and lethal dosages.

One day, after his return from a diplomatic mission, Cesare hands her a golden casing. When she asks its purpose he tells her, with deep, dark eyes, that it used to contain the bullet that killed Giovanni Sforza a day ago, and Lucrezia doesn’t know what it says about her that she looks into her brother’s eyes and feels nothing but gratitude for his deed, that she puts the bullet casing into a casket on her night stand like a trophy and lets it dance through her fingers at night, imagining the shock in Giovanni’s eyes, the triumph in Cesare’s, her own vengeance brought on by the bending of her brother’s trigger finger, full circle. She feels ever closer to Cesare these days; and even though they’ve always understood each other blind, there’s something else bubbling up in her insides when she looks at him, a yearning for _something_ she can’t quite place, a yearning that seems far older than herself.

Everything comes to a head, when Juan goes off the rails. He’s always had a problem with excessiveness, but his excesses have become more and more cocaine-laden in the last few months, ever since he took a bullet to the knee during a standoff and contracted a wound that’s never completely healed.

Rodrigo hosts a cocktail party one night, and Lucrezia has a crawling premonition of terrible things the moment she lays eyes on Juan that day. He looks almost gaunt, too pale, and with a manic fire in his eyes that seems to have grown out of proportion. The malice in his expression when he leaves the living room and climbs the stairs makes her drop her glass and run after him, as fast as her long, blue evening gown allows. She arrives just in time to see Juan lift her baby from his crib and dangle him out of the window, over the balcony on the second floor, cobblestone far beneath his tiny feet.

“Little bastard. A shame to the Borgia name,” Juan sing-songs, almost gently, and Lucrezia screams in terror.

“Give me my baby, Juan! For God’s sake, give me my baby!”

Juan’s lips distort cruelly, but in the end, he hands her her son back, who is by now sobbing uncontrollably. Lucrezia holds him in her arms and avoids looking at her brother leaving the room, whistling a happy melody. She is afraid what the look in her eyes might tell him about her intentions, her knowledge of poison and her insatiable hunger for his blood after this unforgivable transgression.

Cesare finds her only seconds later, rocking Giovanni to sleep, and the look in his eyes, the touch of his hand to her shoulder is a dark, wordless promise of reckoning.

Lucrezia doesn’t know how exactly it happens, but Juan disappears that same night. He is found two days later on the beercan-strewn beach of Santa Monica, five bullet wounds in his chest and stomach.

Rodrigo is the only one who cries at his funeral.

 

***

 

“So, you’re not _Cardinal_ anymore?”

It feels like old times, lying on her brother’s bed on the evening after her second betrothal, his arms about her, one of his favourite _Doors-_ albums turning on his record player, filling the air around them with the low sounds of drums and electric guitars.

“Father needs somebody to do the dirty work. It’s more important to have a man on the trigger than to have me as _Cardinal_.” The tone of his voice speaks of complete satisfaction.

Lucrezia lifts her head to look down at him. “And you will change your ballpoint pen for a gun. Just like you always hoped for.” Worry resonates in her voice, and Cesare immediately picks up on it, softly cradles the side of her face in his palm that bears more calluses than she’s used to.

“What is it, sis?”

“You’ll be in danger,” Lucrezia gives back, leaning into her brother’s touch, soaking his attention up like water in the desert. “Mortal danger.”

Cesare smiles and bumps his nose to hers like he’s often done when they were children. “Don’t worry too much about me, my love. I’ll be fine.”

“But maybe _I_ won’t be fine,” she retorts, and settles back down on his chest. “Without you here.” She sighs and huddles as close as possible to Cesare’s side. “I have a fiancé now. A good one, at last. I think I can love him, Cesare, I really do.”

She feels her brother’s chest move in time with his breathing, his familiar warmth surrounding her like a blanket; and she knows, right in that moment, that she will never feel as safe with Alfonso as she does right here, in her brother’s arms. Her fiancé is a lovely boy, a year younger than her, and he comes from a rich family in San Diego, a family whose support Rodrigo direly needs. He couldn’t hurt a fly, sweet and malleable as he is – and just because of that sweetness he cannot offer what Cesare gives her. Strength. Support. Protection. Even though she’s not lying when she says she could love Alfonso, she already knows she will never love him like she loves her brother, her brother who has killed and bled for her and would drag the moon from the sky, if it would only make her happy. Whom she would sell her soul for at a moment’s notice, at a crossroads maybe, like in that old blues song.

“I’ll miss you terribly. Every day,” she says, into the silence; and Cesare’s fingers bury in her hair.

“Like the California forest misses the rain?” he murmurs, only half-mocking.

“Yes. Just like that.” A shiver runs through her when she thinks of the implications. The words tumble out of her mouth regardless. “I’ll burn.”

The grip of Cesare’s hands on her back tightens, and she feels it, clearly, that they’re on the brink of something, a precipice opening up at her feet. The yearning she has felt ever since Cesare has brought her the bullet casing, ever since she’s stopped being a child, is strong now, tears at her skin and tugs at her stomach, almost palpable in the absence of space between them; and Lucrezia understands, really _understands_ , at the same time the song on the record goes into its second chorus.

_Come on baby, light my fire._

_Come on baby, light my fire._

She doesn’t say anything, just holds Cesare closer, breathes him in.

_Think of Alfonso._

She’s not ready to jump.


	3. Holy Sinners (September 1976)

Her fiancé frustrates her. His religious idea of purity before marriage. His cowardice in the face of his family. His paranoid fear of her brother.

Her brother.

Cesare is growing into his new leading position like he’s been born for it, occupies it better than Juan could ever have dreamed of, and Lucrezia doesn’t know the details on his missions and whereabouts when he is away – which, too, frustrates her – but since a poisoning of her father has been avoided at the last minute, Cesare is, according to rumour, hunting down the family’s enemies with deadly precision and gambits that border on strategic genius. He rarely comes home, and when he does it’s usually late at night. Thus, it takes Lucrezia almost two weeks, until she finally catches him alone in his rooms on a late afternoon. The last changes on her wedding dress have been made yesterday, just in time for Saturday, when the great occasion is to take place; and part of Lucrezia shudders before it, even though she cannot wait to finally be free her of her father’s ambitious plans, to achieve a state of peace and quiet she hopes her marriage might be able to give her.

But the pull in her gut, the longing for Cesare’s presence, for something else from him, another kind of love than the one he’s already giving her in measureless extents, has become stronger and stronger the more her frustrations have been building up; and now, she knows, as she’s standing in front of her brother’s bedroom in her favourite red summer dress, the sounds of the _Stones_ seeping through the door, now, for better or worse, she is ready to jump.

“Can I come in?”

There is a rustling from the inside, somebody scrambling up from a comfortable position.

“Sure, sis.”

When Lucrezia enters, Cesare has just finished putting on a pair of dark jeans and is now, obviously, in search for a shirt. Lucrezia lets her eyes drift over the expanse of his naked back, his slender arms, allows the feeling she has identified as desire wash over her, and signifies her brother to stop his search with a hand to his shoulder.

“Let me see you,” she asks, and the expression in his eyes contracts a small edge of shock when her hand drifts over his neck, his chest, then further down- He stops her right there, enclosing her wrist gently in his hand.

“Lucrezia…” he begins, and she can hear his voice tremble. When she looks up into his eyes she sees clearly that stopping her is an act of self-restraint, not one of aversion; and still she lifts an eyebrow at him.

“Am I overstepping, _brother_?”

Cesare swallows visibly. “One might say so.”

“That’s not an answer.”

She moves in, until her clothed form almost touches his body and their mouths are close enough to feel the other’s breath.

“Do you want me?” Lucrezia dares ask.

The space between them sparks, then goes up in flames, when Cesare covers her mouth with his, a desperate hand at the side of her neck. Lucrezia yields, opens, and despite the knowledge that this is _wrong_ , her fluttering heart tells her that it is the only way she wants to continue living. Cesare’s lips are everything at once, careful, soft, yet demanding, his teeth and tongue an all-encompassing presence, and Lucrezia answers in kind, like she’s spent her life doing nothing else than kissing him.

Her brother lets go of her wrist to touch her temple, and she finds the place where he is _hard,_ already, for _her,_ only for her, swallows his moan into her mouth, high off the sound alone, flying like she’s just injected a dose of her father’s opioids into her bloodstream. Cesare’s possessive left pulls her head in while his right dances tentatively over her breasts, like he’s still not sure if he’s allowed to have this, if she really wants to give herself to him.

Her nimble fingers are reaching for the buttons on his jeans to assure him of the fact, when a knock sounds at the door; and they jump apart at once.

“Sir, we’re here for the fitting of your suit. For the wedding,” sounds a polite, male voice from the other side, and Lucrezia giggles a little at the face Cesare makes.

“I’ll leave the two of you. For delicacy’s sake.”

Her brother still looks dazed, when she walks past the tailor out of his room, his kiss a burning afterthought on her lips.

 

 

***

 

 

“Alfonso, please, he keeps these things all over the place…it could have been an acci-“

“An accident?” The voice of the man she has been married to for barely seven hours cracks on a high pitch, while he dangles the small, black listening device he just found between the seats of his Corvette while trying to rid his wife of her undergarments in front of her face.

“Is this what I am to your brother?! What I am to your family?! Somebody who needs to be _spied upon_ because he cannot be trusted?!?!”

He tosses the device into the crumpled billows of white tulle in Lucrezia’s lap, anger burning in his eyes, then hits the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

For a small while neither of them says a word. Lucrezia’s eyes are fixed to the device in her lap, a device whose likes she’s seen many times in her brother’s possession. She’s perfectly aware that Cesare doesn’t trust Alfonso, and that the placement of this wiretap was not an accident. Her brother is suspicious towards the motives of everybody, except a few choice people. It’s kind of his job. Why should Lucrezia’s husband be free of these suspicions?

“I need to catch some air,” Alfonso announces, opens the door, climbs out and shuts it with a decisive slam, leaving Lucrezia alone, half-undressed and humiliated in the dark confinements of the car. She bites her lip, pushes her slip back up and quietly fixes her dress, then climbs out herself, leaving the veil and the wiretap on the passenger seat. She doesn’t go around to Alfonso, doesn’t look at him; instead she walks straight back, up the driveway, to her father’s house, tears in her eyes, the clattering of too-high heels on cobblestone in her wake. Alfonso doesn’t stop her.

Alfonso doesn’t call after her.

Alfonso does nothing.

Inside the party is, thankfully, over. All guests have gone to bed, and a few cleaners are already busy picking up stray glasses and clearing what’s left of the buffet. If any of them notice the untimely return of the bride, who should long be on the way to her husband’s house in San Diego, two hours south, none of them let it show. On her way up the stairs Lucrezia hears the sound of a starting car and the harsh grating of wheels on stone from outside, and for a short moment she allows herself to actively despise Alfonso. Despise his weakness. His cowardice. His lack of love for her.

 _Am I so hard to love_?

She remembers dwelling on this thought too many times during her first marriage, but holds back the tears it elicits, thinks of Cesare, when she walks into her room, Cesare, who loves her, loves her, loves her; and she makes a decision. She finds scissors in a drawer and cuts herself out of her 10.000-dollar-dress – barely holds back from cutting it into a thousand tiny shreds while she’s at it –, takes the pins out of her hair and puts on a white, translucent negligee that she bought for the night of her betrothal: the night Alfonso refused to sleep with her for the first time.

She pads through the hallway on bare, quiet feet and sneaks into Cesare’s room without further ado, where she finds him asleep on his bed, his hair like a dark halo around his head on the pillow, his features relaxed and peaceful. His bedside lamp is still on, bathing his form in soft light, his skin brown and golden.

He is breathtakingly beautiful.

On his chest Lucrezia spots a book that tipped on its face when he fell asleep, an edition of a Thomas-Mann-novel by the name of _The Holy Sinner._ Its well-thumbed state speaks of Cesare’s affection for the book; but Lucrezia has never seen it in his hands before. She takes it from his chest, closes it and looks at her brother, watches the small shift in his muscles at the sudden absence of weight, the little frown forming on his forehead. Carefully she sets the book down on the nightstand and, less carefully, pulls the blanket off Cesare’s sleeping form in one swift movement. He jerks up with a start, an instinctual hand stretching out towards the drawer of his nightstand, and Lucrezia is surprised at the speed of his reflexes. His motions still immediately and his eyes widen, the moment he recognizes her.

“Lucrezia…what…?”

“My husband left me.” The words are bitter in her throat as she climbs the bed and sinks down next to her brother. He is naked, save for a pair of black shorts, and she revels in his closeness, lets her hand drift along his side, down over naked skin, like it is the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it is. “Ten minutes ago. He just…drove off. He won’t love me. Tell me, Cesare, is it…is it because I’m a Borgia? Or is it because I am me? Because I am broken? Because I am _wrong_?”

Cesare exhales sharply and his hand finds the side of her face seemingly of its own accord, fingertips stroking her skin with a reverence that makes her heart swell. “No, my love. No. Don’t think like that. Don’t you ever…”

“But I think I _am_ wrong, brother. And you are, too,” Lucrezia interrupts him, her voice trembling. She’s unable to stop her fingers from stroking Cesare’s skin, the hard ridges of his ribs, the softer side of his abdomen. “For feeling like this.”

She sees his heart through his eyes, sees the heat, sees the knowledge of what they’re about to do, an inevitability, rushing towards them like a meteor, dragged into the orbit of a planet.

“Oh, Lucrezia,” Cesare finally breathes. Her name off his lips sounds just like it is supposed to sound, and Lucrezia’s entire being exhales. “I wish-“

She gently seals his lips with her thumb, shutting him up. “No, don’t say it.” Her finger wanders, traces the line of his jaw, and Cesare’s eyes close reflexively. “We both know it’s not the truth. This was bound to happen for a long time. Just…” Cesare opens his eyes again, looks at her, and now there’s so much adoration in his gaze, she can hardly breathe through it. Her hand tangles in his soft, soft hair, and her lips close in on his like they don’t have a choice. “Just love me tonight, Cesare. Please.”

The kiss that follows begins what feels like one great river flowing into another, effortless and vast at the same time. Their flesh and blood move like masses of water that combine into a single entity, greater and more torrential than before, forgetting altogether that there were two of it in the beginning. Hands, mouths, desire, yearning, they all move in unison, delivering them to one another; and Lucrezia has never felt impatience like she feels before Cesare finally pushes into her, settles where he _belongs;_ and when he does, it’s breathtakingly new, oddly familiar. From one moment to the next an unexpected battery of pictures flashes through Lucrezia’s mind, pictures of Cesare and her, frozen in never-ending circles, and she knows, with sudden clarity, that they’ve done this before, that they were always meant to end up here, here, _here,_ where, amidst all the chaos and obscurity of their lives they finally, impossibly, make _sense_.

She smiles at Cesare, and he smiles back, like he knows, like he feels it, too; and when Lucrezia buries her face in the soft curls of his hair and sighs his name, a prayer from her lips, he tumbles apart in her arms.

For a moment between them, the world ceases to exist.

For a moment there’s peace.


	4. Dark Paradise (October 1976)

Eventually reality crashes back down on them with a vengeance, after they dared to neglect it for the night. Lucrezia finds herself unable to sleep in her brother’s arms as the wee hours of morning colour his windowsill grey.

“I should be in San Diego, Cesare. The Aragonas…they will ask questions, if I’m not there. I’m married to their son, after all.”

Cesare presses a kiss to her shoulder, his hands warm on her back, and she already misses his touch so much it hurts.

“Pack up, then. I can drive you.” His voice sounds bleak and flat. “Little Giovanni is still with mamá?”

Lucrezia huffs. “You know Alfonso’s family doesn’t want him in San Diego. Religious traditionalists. _A son born out of wedlock? We will not have something like this in our household!_ We both heard it loud and clear, out of Ferdinand’s mouth, multiple times. And Alfonso…well, you know he won’t stand up for me.”

Her hands ball into fists, but Cesare turns her around in his arms and looks at her, the hint of a smile on his lips through strands of sleep-ruffled hair, and her fingers unclench. “You’ll have to visit mother very often, then, sis.” A moment later the joy disappears from his expression. “But you’re right. You should be at your husband’s house before everybody notices your absence.”

She hesitantly leaves the warmth and comfort of her brother’s bed and packs her travel essentials. Most of her stuff has already been moved to the Aragona estate over the last few weeks, anyway, and her room looks rather barren when she leaves, dressed in a flowing, half-long garment of white lace with wide sleeves and a leather belt, her hair sloppily pinned up.

Cesare’s black Aston Martin DBS is ready in the driveway when she gets down. Her brother is wearing that pair of dark leather pants her father hates with a burning passion, combined with a black shirt and more leather in form of a jacket. He’s pulled his hair up into a bun and put on aftershave, like he’s taking her for a ride to the cinema, not returning her to her husband, and Lucrezia keeps a hand on him during the whole two-hour ride, soaks his presence and his smell and the small sounds of leather on leather up, in hopes of storing it away, so she can remember what it feels like to have Cesare here, right next to her.

The closer they get to their destination, the more anxiety fills Lucrezia’s stomach, catalyzes itself through need, and her hand moves up on Cesare’s thigh, until he throws her a glance and takes a right into a dusty road by a lakeside, stopping the car. The sun is only just rising, flaming orange and red in front of them, and Lucrezia climbs into her brother’s lap, where she finds him just as desperate as herself. “I love you, Cesare.” She whispers it into his temple, kisses the words into his mouth, leaves them imprinted at the side of his neck, and Cesare pulls her in like it is a physical necessity, like he needs her this close just to survive. “And I’ll die down here,” Lucrezia says, her hand moving beneath Cesare’s shirt to find his heartbeat, strong and familiar as her own. “Without you.”

Her brother pushes his forehead to hers, breathes the space between them, his hand stroking her hair. “I won’t let that happen. I’ll come for you. And whoever tries to stop me will meet my wrath.” He pushes the words out through his teeth, before he claims her mouth again, and it scares Lucrezia how much she believes him, but it fills her with hope all the same, knowing he would tear the world apart to be with her.

They don’t make love: Kissing already hurts, and having each other now would be too much to bear for either of them. But they stay huddled together, share stolen touches and soft whispers, hidden to the world in the confines of Cesare’s car until the sun is up.

 

 

***

 

Alfonso tries hard to make good for his shortcomings.

Right away, he protects Lucrezia from prying questions about her absence, tells his family an acceptable lie, about her having felt unwell after the wedding party and staying at the Borgia estate until she was better. Next, he apologises, in private, for his outburst on their wedding night, and proceeds to shower her with gifts and flowers.

But despite his efforts Lucrezia still feels like a critical tie has been cut between them, and she is far away in her mind whenever they’re together. They have sex, once, due to the pressure of Alfonso’s family, but all the while Lucrezia imagines her brother’s eyes, her brother’s hands on her, and she refuses any further sexual contact with her husband after that.

One morning, a few weeks later, the family patriarch – Ferdinand, or _King_ Ferdinand, like his sons call him when he’s not in the room – is found dead in his Koi pond; and since he was the strongest advocate against Giovanni’s presence in Naples, his death opens up a short window of opportunity. Lucrezia immediately calls her mother and has her son brought to her without further ado, before the power structures inside the Aragona family are completely stabilized again and somebody tries to stop her.

She doesn’t see Cesare, who is on a mission in _Las Vegas_ , of all places, apparently still handling business with the Sforza family, but thankfully Frederigo, older brother to Alfonso and new patriarch of the Aragona family, is far more likeable than his father, respects her wishes, accepts her child and gives her ample liberties.

That is, until one day she climbs into her husband’s Corvette to make a weekend trip to L.A. and realizes with growing horror that there’s no fuel in it, and all cables have been cut. When she confronts Frederigo he gives her a cruel smile and explains to her that she and her husband have been put under arrest and will never leave San Diego ever again: After all, the Aragona family needs leverage to support them against Cesare’s by now infamous proclivity for conquering territory, and what better way to obtain it than this. It takes Lucrezia a moment digest that she has, once more, become a pawn in a chessmasters’ game; but this time she decides to do something about it.

By the time the next party rolls around, Lucrezia knows enough people in San Diego to find somebody who sells her a bag of 4-GHB, a colourless, tasteless sleeping drug she’s read about time and time again in her pharmacology books. She spikes the wine with a hefty dose of it; and by eleven o’clock everybody in the entire household, including Federigo, has fallen asleep on chairs and sofas.

Everybody – except Alfonso, Lucrezia and the child on her arm, who move through the house like ghosts, grabbing personal belongings and car keys, before they climb into Frederigo’s Ford Mustang and drive away, north, towards L.A..

They pause at a rest stop to switch seats, because Lucrezia is getting tired, and when she climbs out of the driver’s seat, tastes the cool desert air on her tongue, the first precursor of _freedom_ , her eyes brush the dark coating of an Aston Martin right next to them.

“Lucrezia!” Her name is called across the parking lot and she turns around, in awe, spots a dark figure running towards her. She is no longer master over her feet, when she recognizes her brother, not a figment of her imagination but just as real as herself, sprints in his direction, and her body collides with Cesare’s halfway, his arms around her, _finally_. He’s wearing leather, just like he did when he left her, and it feels like no time has passed at all, when he presses kisses to every inch of her face he can get to. _You came for me. Just like you promised._

“They kept us in San Diego,” Lucrezia explains, breathlessly clinging to his jacket. “They cut the cables on Alfonso’s car. Frederigo…”

“He was working with the Sforzas. We were all betrayed.” Cesare stops kissing her and throws a look to where Alfonso is standing. “Your husband had nothing to do with it?”  
“No, Cesare. He was a prisoner, like me.” She looks up at his face. “He treated me well.”

“I would hope so.” Cesare’s voice is almost a growl, but it mellows out only seconds later. “I heard from mamá that Giovanni is with you?”  
“I brought him to San Diego after Ferdinand died. It was my only chance to have him by my side. He’s in the back of the car now, sleeping. Do you want to see him?”

Cesare makes a small gesture with his head, directed at Alfonso. “I don’t think your husband would like that very much. Let’s get home first. As far away from that snake-pit as possible. Where you’ll be safe and sound.”

Lucrezia smiles at him, a full-blown smile that she hasn’t smiled since their night together.

“Home,” she says, and Cesare pulls her in once again.

  

***

 

Her husband knows.

Lucrezia can see it in his eyes, in the concentrated expression he studies Cesare with, can see the barely-hidden jealousy and the rage and the disbelief. Ever since the night they left San Diego, ever since the encounter on the parking lot, his eyes have grown more hooded and manic; and pictures of Juan’s face during his last weeks rise before Lucrezia’s inner eye like nightmarish premonitions when the smell of too much alcohol on Alfonso’s breath starts becoming a nightly occurrence. It doesn’t help Alfonso’s paranoia that they both temporarily live in the west wing of the Borgia estate, where Cesare’s men are a constant presence, but Lucrezia’s brother is only protecting the family, and it is not in her powers to stop him.

She hasn’t visited Cesare’s bed since she came back, despite the familiar pull she feels every time his eyes and hands linger a little too long on her during breakfast, lunch and dinner, beckoning her into him. She knows he’s longing for her, understands the physical need she reads in his eyes on a visceral level. But she’s too afraid of what it might do to Alfonso, if she shames him like this, right under his nose; and that’s what holds her back. Despite their estrangement she still likes her husband, and it pains her to see him lose the sweetness she saw in him when she chose him, in no small part due to her own doing.

When Alfonso drunkenly threatens Cesare over dinner one day, the three of them alone in the house, Rodrigo at their mother’s over the weekend, Giulia on set in New York, Cesare’s lips curl into a tiger-smile and Lucrezia knows deep in her guts that this isn’t going to go on for much longer. That things are going to take their course.

Her husband is already beyond salvation.

The night after that she wakes to the sounds of a fight in the garden, and she rushes downstairs through the living room, where the glass doors are wide-open, white curtains billowing in the night air, obscuring her view. She hardly takes note of the _Stones_ record that’s turning on the player, one of Cesare’s favourites, but the voice of Mick Jagger still invades her mind, singing of cops, criminals, sinners, saints, heads, tails and the Devil. Lucrezia rushes outside.

Her husband is lying on the stones by the poolside, his eyes sightless in the pallid lights, and Cesare kneels over him with a knife in his bloodied hands. Lucrezia sees the shock in his face, when she runs over the dry grass screaming Alfonso’s name, then falls to her knees next to her husband. Her husband, who is dead, a gaping knife wound at his throat.

Her wild eyes find Cesare’s, and there must be an accusation inside them, because her brother tries to grasp her hand, while she searches for a pulse on Alfonso, knowing she won’t find one.

“He pulled a knife on me, Lucrezia. I…”

Lucrezia withdraws herself from his grip, and her voice pitches so high it cracks. “What have we done, Cesare? What have we done to him?”

She stares down at her bloodied hands, and for a moment she’s sure she’s going insane, because she’s seen this blood before, clinging to her fingers and to her face; _there’s just no need for poison this time._ All her energy leaves her at once, and she sinks down on her husband’s dead body, sobbing uncontrollably; then her brother is with her, pulls her away and into his arms, and she clings to him as he lifts her up, carries her inside. A red-haired shadow moves past them when they step into the house, Micheletto, and Lucrezia doesn’t want to think about how he’ll make Cesare’s manslaughter look like an accident, how often he’s done this before. Her brother carries her up the stairs, straight into the bathroom in the main house; lets warm water pour into the big marble basin she loved as a child, rids her of her nightgown and sets her down inside it. She feels numb, while the water rises around her, still unable to understand, to make sense of this cruelty, but then Cesare takes a sponge from the cabinet, kneels down beside her and starts washing her, first her fingers, then her palms, her forearms, her shoulders, the sides of her face. It feels like a ritual, having him clean her, while the water takes away the red; and wherever his skin touches hers, warmth returns to her, fills her up, until she stills his hand with a grip to his wrist.

Her lip quivers before she speaks, but she knows she’s not going to cry again. “How can you be like this? Your hands kill, and then they touch me, and all I feel is softness.”

Cesare looks at her, and there’s something tortured in his eyes. “Do you hate me, sis?”

It sounds lost, like the words of a child, and Lucrezia lets go of his wrist and laces her fingers with his. “No, brother,” she whispers her final secret, something she has kept to herself for years, a last wall of protection against her feelings for her brother. “It scares me. How impossible it is for me to hate you. If you tore my heart from my body, if you killed everything I love, I still wouldn’t hate you. I love you, Cesare. ‘Til my very last breath. That’s a fact. There is nothing you or I or the world can do to change it.”

The sponge slips from Cesare’s fingers, and he looks like a praying man for a moment, his head slightly bowed, his eyes closed as if he’d just received a sign from God. “Lucrezia,” he says, takes her hand and kisses it, kisses her palm and each of her fingers, then looks at her face with a hope and tenderness in his eyes that she remembers from long, hot afternoons in their mother’s garden.

“What about you, brother?” Lucrezia says, her voice small.

Cesare squeezes her hand, pushes a strand of hair from her forehead. “Do you really have to ask?”

She lets a hand drift over his cheek. “No. But I am asking.”

Her brother’s eyes fill with intent all of a sudden, brim with heat; and his hand grips hers tighter, like he’s about to swear an oath.

“I will love you until the stars fall from the sky, until the earth swallows us. I will love you with my soul and with my body and with every last shred of my heart. Always.”

Her thumb rests on his temple as she accepts his vow, and her eyes return his gaze, before she lets her fingers slide down to the hem of his shirt.

“Then love me, Cesare. Love me now.”


End file.
